


Maskless

by blackjacktheboss



Series: Maskless [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 05:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11913810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackjacktheboss/pseuds/blackjacktheboss
Summary: an au where Percy is older and struggling to cope with all the things he has seen and donebased on a poem of the same name by Miles Hodges





	Maskless

**I. The coolest kid in the room actually doesn’t have any friends**

The campfire isn’t as comforting as it once was. Percy watches the flames, focuses on their flicker and the crackle of the wood as the voices of young campers swirl around him. _It doesn’t feel like it used to,_ he thinks. The hum of Camp doesn’t settle over him like a warm blanket anymore, and the sight of familiar faces doesn’t make him feel connected to the life he’s living. Now when he looks around, instead of people he sees shrouds; he thinks of the eulogies that will be given over their funeral pyres. It’s a feeling that has sunk into him over the years, the way a skipped rock finally sinks to the bottom of a lake. That feeling now rests in the pit of his stomach, a hollowness at the very center of him. Some days it feels small, more like a pebble stuck in his shoe than anything. He can carry on normally for the most part but at some point, it makes its presence known. Other days, it is a boulder resting on top of him like the sky rests on Atlas’ shoulders. It consumes his very existence, his muscles burn with the weight and it occupies his every thought. It is a part of him that he wishes he could drown.

Staying disconnected isn’t as hard as he once found it to be. He breaks bread with these kids, shares laughs and a tale or two about his glory days, but nothing ever seems to reach his heart. He feels like a child restricted to the shallow end of the pool as he watches everyone else plunge into deeper waters. Inevitably, his fatal flaw enters his head and Athena’s words echo in his thoughts: “To save a friend, you would sacrifice the world”. _But what happens to all that loyalty_ , he wonders, _when there’s no one to give it to_.

**II. Cheek safety pinned to the edge by a pile of regrets**

Charles. Silena. Michael. Leo. Connor. Travis. Frank. Grover. Clarisse. When Percy awakes in Cabin 3, he recites the names of friends he has lost. At first a prayer, it has now become his penance. Charles. Silena. Michael. Leo. Connor. Travis. Frank. Grover. Clarisse.

Charles, gone too soon.

Silena, a traitor who fought for redemption.

Michael, a war hero.

Leo, a martyr.

Connor, whose feet were not fast enough.

Travis, who sought revenge.

Frank, a fire that burned out too quickly.

Grover, lost to the wild.

And now Clarisse. A warrior until the very end.

As Percy goes down the list in his head, he is acutely aware of the regrets each friend took with them. Regrets of not being fast enough, strong enough, present enough. _Enough_. Percy laughs darkly. He can’t remember the last time that word meant anything to him. Perhaps it was the last time he let his mother hold him, really hold him, and it had been years since then. It had been a night when his loneliness became too much to bare on his own, so he’d retreated to the only place he could. Sally had held him as sobs wracked his body, running her fingers through his hair. He can still feel her heartbeat against his cheek if he’s still enough. She had never wanted anything from him, never demanded his heroism or expected him to be better than he was. When he was around her, she accepted him for who and what he was. That night when she held him, she let him be a puddle of a boy, who wanted nothing more than to evaporate and disappear. He was always enough for her. No matter what. Enough as a son, as a hero, as a man. She held him solid that night, and he fell asleep feeling whole. He longed for that night.

Or maybe the last time he had felt like enough had been the last time he sat on the porch of the Big House with Grover and Annabeth, reminiscing about their first quest together.

Feeling whole now felt like a false memory to Percy, the type where you’re not sure if you actually remember or you’ve just seen so many pictures and heard so many stories that your brain fills in the gaps for itself.

The list runs through his head again: Charles. Silena. Michael. Leo. Connor. Travis. Frank. Grover. Clarisse. _We were just kids_ , he reflects. But the Gods and the Fates have no time for children, only heroes. Heroes who claw and fight their way to victory, all for the glory of Olympus. _But once we stop doing that, we’re all disposable_ , he contemplates. _Hell, we’re disposable either way_.

Ω

Percy sits at the table for Cabin 3, eating silently as he continues to recite the list in his head. Charles. Silena. Michael. Leo. Connor. Travis. Frank. Grover. Clarisse. Charles. Silena. Michael. Leo. Connor. Travis. Frank. Grover. Clarisse. Charles. Silena. Michael. Leo. Conn-

His list is interrupted by the feeling of a tap on his hand. Percy looks up to see bright grey eyes looking at him and his heart speeds up.

“Good morning, Mr. Jackson.”

“Good morning…?”

“Letha. I took your sword fighting class last summer.”

“Right. Letha. How can I help you?”

“I was wondering if you would give me private sword fighting lessons. I’ve decided that the sword will be my weapon and after taking your class I’m sure you’re the most qualified to teach me. I think two-a-days will be most effective for my learning style, but I promise to be flexible with how we spread those out. Though I do ask you keep in mind that I have other classes I’m taking. I want to be the most well-rounded hero I can be.”

Percy considers the girl in front of him, surely no older than 13. Her hair is a dirtier blonde than children from Cabin 6 usually have, but her eyes are so bright they almost look silver instead of grey. They are clear and innocent, not yet tinted with the burden of being a hero, but have a flare of aggressiveness that will serve her well if she’s trained properly. She is sure of herself, like any child of Athena, and she projects a confidence that takes Percy back to when he was twelve years old. She sits up straight with her shoulders back and looks him directly in the eyes.

Charles. Silena. Michael. _Heroes are disposable_.

“So, Mr. Jackson-”

Leo. Connor. Travis. _A grey funeral shroud_.

“-what do you say?”

Frank. Grover. Clarisse. _Regret_.

Percy takes a deep breath, sitting up straight to match her posture as he reaches a hand across the table towards her. Charles. Silena. Michael. Leo. Connor. Travis. Frank. Grover. Clarisse. In his mind, Percy stares down his pile of regrets.

If he can help one demigod make it, maybe that will be enough.

As Letha takes his hand and shakes it, Percy smiles. “You’ve got a deal.”

**III. I wonder, how do you trust a man whose eyes can go from green to gone in a single night?**

Percy stands shirtless in front of his bathroom mirror, watching water trail down the sides of his face and drip off of his chin. He considers himself, a man lost in the curves of his own soul, and wonders what it will take for the real him to return. If it’s even possible at all. If there is even a real him that remains or if it’s simply a figment of his imagination. He is shaken from this reflection by loud banging on the door of Cabin 3. When he opens it, a satyr with panicked eyes rushes forward and grabs his arm.

“We have an incoming party and they’ve got company! We need you!”

Percy quickly turns back into the cabin, grabbing a shirt and pulling it over his head as he begins his jog to Half-Blood Hill.

He stands at the crest of that old, familiar hill with Riptide in pen form twirling between his fingers. Ghosts of a childhood lost run past him, leaving whispers of Annabeth’s laugh and his hope for a happy future. To his left, Peleus sits at attention sniffing at the air while curled protectively around the Golden Fleece. Chiron appears to Percy’s right, with two older campers accompanying him.

“How many monsters?”

Chiron releases a deep sigh riddled with concern, “The last report the satyrs could send out said at least three, maybe more by now.”

“Do we know whose kids we’re dealing with?”

“All suspected but a daughter of Hecate, a son of Hephaestus, and a child of Aphrodite.”

“How the hell did they all end up traveling together?”

“All from affluent families, all ended up at the same boarding school. They tried splitting up but I’m afraid they were… they were herded back together.”

“So this is a hunting party.”

“It would seem that way, yes.”

Percy rolls his eyes, “You know, I’m really sick of the The Fates’ shit.” The sky rumbles and Percy waves it away with his free hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

One of the campers, a son of Demeter, steps up to Percy. “So what’s our plan?”

“The plan is simple. Monsters on me,” he says, stepping up to the boundary, “While you two make sure those kids and satyrs make it back across this line. Clear?”

The other camper, a daughter of Apollo, looks at Percy skeptically, “How can you be so sure the monsters will go after you when they’ll have five other demigods to choose from?”

Dark shadows appear on the horizon of the trail and Peleus growls from deep in his throat.

Percy looks at the camper, his green eyes shifting into something else entirely as he begins to slowly walk backwards down the hill, his arms stretched out. “What monster wouldn’t want a chance at the son of Poseidon?”

Ω

Growing up, Percy never thought of himself as a fighter. It wasn’t something he chose, but something that had always happened to him. Life as a demigod made fighting a necessity; a survival tactic that he happened to master. Now, as he stumbles back across the Camp border bloody and bruised, the feeling of fighting is one he instantly misses.

When he fights, he is not Percy Jackson: ex-boyfriend, terrible son, horrible brother, old friend who doesn’t keep in touch. When he fights, he is simply Percy Jackson, Son of Poseidon. As much as it is a title that burdens him, it is one he knows how to bare. It is his heaven and hell, his penance, his salvation, his legacy. The weight of Riptide in his hand, a monster at his throat, is the only time Percy feels in control of his fate. As he slices, stabs, dodges, and dives, he feels the burn of the ichor that runs through his veins. He becomes someone powerful, a version of himself that the world can’t touch or hurt. As long as he’s fighting, nothing else matters. But as long as he’s fighting... nothing else matters. This duality haunts him, as the thrill of battle is all that he craves but that craving is what keeps him from moving on. At some point, he became a fighter and no one ever bothered to teach him how to stop. _But then again, heroes aren’t supposed to stop fighting_ , he realizes. _They’re supposed to die_.

In the throes of battle, a hero does not have to think of all the ways he is failing or how many people he has let down. Fighting, when done correctly, consumes a hero and distracts them from everything they are and everything they aren’t. That is the feeling that Percy chases; the place where who he is and who he could be collide to create nothingness. It’s easier, most of the time, to be a hero rather than to be a person.

He lays on the grass staring up at stars that tell stories like his and mentally checks off all the types of monsters he has killed. _I’ve got a few more to go_ , he thinks as a wicked smile spreads across his face. _I just gotta chase ‘em down._ _And fight._  

**IV. Check his mask, he wears it well**

The list of people who recognize the cracks in Percy’s mask has grown small over the years. Distance, both emotional and physical, has robbed Jason of the ability. Piper is annoyingly perceptive, which is why Percy keeps their interactions short. Sally’s voice has become more concerned during their weekly phone calls but she isn’t yet desperate enough to really push him to admit to anything being wrong. Chiron can see through the mask but always makes the conscious decision to let Percy keep it on. Percy doesn’t think either of them could handle what might happen if he loses it.

Most of the time, he is happy to have it. It allows him to be social at times, visiting New Rome for a weekend or meeting his family for a day in Montauk. The mask comforts him, giving him permission to pretend not to be as broken as he feels. He can assume the persona of a Percy who  made it through everything unscathed. He can pretend to be a man better than the one he is. When he has his mask on, he can pretend to be in control. He wishes he didn’t so desperately desire to be in control. But he does. He feels stunted and polluted, as if he is undrinkable, toxic, deadly. So every morning, rather than dive into the depths he is sure are filled with nothing but debris, he keeps his head just above the surface. He slips his mask on, and presents the front of a pure and untainted mountain stream. People can look at him like he is something fresh and undiscovered, somehow clean despite the virulent environment that surrounds him.

Then there are days when the mask grates against his skin. It irritates him, makes him feel confined, and it takes everything in him not to scream in frustration. Those are the days he wishes Annabeth were around to rip his mask off of him. She had always had that effect on him, even when they were twelve years old and complete strangers. And she was never shy about it either, not that there was anything Annabeth Chase was ever really shy about. She would tear his mask off and wave it in front of him, but it never seemed like taunting.

No, rather she held it up like a mirror, waiting for him to take in his reflection and see what it was he was hiding behind. For most of his life, his mask had been made up of hope. Hope for his father to come home, for friends, for getting through a school year without attracting any attention, for his best friend to fall in love with him, for a future that went past age 17. This hope is what kept him going for so long. That hope was a reminder of why he was fighting so hard. That hope grounded him in who he was as a hero and as a person.

Thinking on it now as he lies in bed avoiding the start of another day, he’s not sure what his mask is made of. _Memories maybe_ , he muses. _Memories glued together by nostalgia….and maybe a little hope_. He finally rises, fitting his mask to his face as he opens his cabin door.

“Good morning, Percy! How are you today?” A satyr asks.

Percy adjusts his mask, and considers what kind of hero and person he wants to be today. Smiling warmly, he answers back. “Morning! I’m great, thanks. How are you?”

**V. But sometimes he comes home and he’s lonely**

The floor creaks beneath his feet as he enters his apartment, chased inside by the rising sun. He peels his jacket off and throws it onto the couch, thinking he should probably just put it up now but it’s fine, he’ll do it later. There are no pictures on the walls of his apartment, no decorations or knick-knacks on the shelves to make it look like a home. The only clue that it is a space in which someone lives is the cereal bowl in the sink and a single seashell magnet that clings to his refrigerator. Percy drags himself down the hallway to the bathroom, where he reaches into the medicine cabinet and pulls out a small bottle of dark green pills. The label is simple, white with a red caduceus on the front. They had been a gift from the Hermes cabin, sleeping pills that block nightmares but only if used sparingly. Take them too often and a demigod could get so backlogged with nightmares that they never really wake up from them. Percy pops two into his mouth and swallows hard before brushing his teeth and heading to his bedroom. He sheds the rest of his clothes and climbs into bed, tired in every way imaginable.

Ω  
  
Percy awakens slowly, his eyes taking their time to adjust to the sensation of being open. It is nighttime again and darkness has crept in around him. He turns his head and spots his little blue fish night light, a remnant of his childhood innocence that has stuck with him through the years. Looking at it gives him something to focus on, a happy epicenter to coax his mind out of its sleepy haze. Before long though, the reality of his life encroaches on the happy space that the night light provides and suddenly it’s as if there were no light in his life at all. He turns back to look up at the ceiling, his fingers interlocked across his stomach. They begin to tap nervously as thoughts race through his head until he can’t contain them anymore. _Idle hands and all that_ , he thinks, as he reaches over to his nightstand to pick up his phone. He slides his finger across the screen until he opens a new message.

To: Leave Her Alone

I miss you. Can we grab a drink?

He hits send without a second thought, wanting to allow himself this fleeting moment of reaching out to someone (even if he had promised himself he would stop reaching out to this particular someone). Almost immediately he sees three dots appear, and without realizing it he begins to hold his breath.

The bar near my place in 20.

**VI. Sometimes he does things because he knows that tomorrow he will choose to forget them**

It is 4 am and he watches Annabeth sleep, softly running his fingers across her bare back as it rises and falls. They’ve been like this for a few years now. Too in love to completely let go, but too broken to really try and make it fit again. Percy wishes he wasn’t such a coward about it, but he doesn’t know what’s worse: this back and forth game they play or trying and losing her for good. Her back rises and falls again, in time with Percy’s own breath. _What if she doesn’t understand_ , he thinks. _Or what if she does and it’s still not enough?_

So tonight, like every other night their loneliness has chased them back to each other, he will creep through the dark of her apartment to put his clothes back on before leaving without saying goodbye. As he walks home, he will keep Riptide in his hand as he hopes for a monster to challenge him. No monster will show and he will call the Fates cowards under his breath. He will crawl back into his own empty bed, silently praying the smell of her doesn’t fade too quickly from his clothes, before drifting off to a nightmare-filled sleep. When he wakes in the morning, he will delete the text he sent her in an attempt to reclaim the alone that he has so carefully cultivated. He will then make himself breakfast while pretending to read the paper. He will call his mother and decline talking to his sister, but will tell his mom to give her a kiss for him. After taking a shower, he will head back to Camp Half-Blood and spend the day training kids in the hopes that they don’t die too quickly. That night, he will stay late in the training arena, hacking away at air in an attempt to make himself feel alive. He will go to bed after three glasses of whiskey, a bottle of which he keeps stashed in his bunk. The whiskey will help him forget that the night before he was not alone, but rather in the bed of the only woman he has ever loved.

He will choose to forget that it was his decision to leave.

When morning comes, he will choose to forget why he bothered saving the world so many times.

**Author's Note:**

> Hannah is the best beta ever. This would not have gotten done without her, and for that I am eternally grateful.


End file.
